Automad 2.0 Alpha

It took some time, but the stable release of Automad version 2 is getting closer and closer. Many things have changed, the main concept and goals however are still the same — a flexible and fast file-base content management system and templating engine.

What's new?

Being currently in alpha, the list of changes so far is quite long, details will be communicated in the finalized documentation and release notes. Most notably UIkit and jQuery are no longer dependencies and have been replaced by modern web-components. The entire front end is now written in TypeScript. 

The block editor received a huge update and can be used now much more intuitively, especially when working with blocks that are nested in layout sections. Nested layouts don’t require opening modal windows. It is also possible now to drag’n’drop between sections.

Multilingual content is now supported natively. Visitors can be routed to pages based on the locale settings. A site can exist in multiple versions for each required language side by side inside a single installation. Editors can add routes at the root level for each locale such as /de or /en. The most top one will be used as default in case a visitor’s locale doesn’t match anything. 

Also, a new editing workflow has arrived. Starting with Automad v2, all changes that are made inside the dashboard are saved automatically as drafts. It is therefore no longer required to push the save button. Drafts are only visible to admins when being signed in. They can be reviewed also in the in-Page editing mode. After finishing all edits and reviewing the changes, a page draft can be published. 

When editing a page for a longer time, snapshots of the page are saved periodically in the background. This allows for restoring a previous revision of page with a few clicks only. Automad v1 already had a trash bin for pages. However that one was never accessible from the dashboard. This changes now and pages can be restored easily inside the trash bin section of the dashboard.

The file tree in the sidebar now supports drag’n’drop operations for moving and sorting pages. It is no longer required to move pages inside a modal window. Also manually setting a page index prefix for sorting is no longer needed.

Configuring SMPT for sending emails properly is now possible. At the moment, sendmail and external SMTP servers are supported. Other options might be added in the future.

And finally, the new dashboard comes in three different beautiful color schemes — light, dark and low contrast.

Try the Live Demo

In case you quickly want to try out Automad version 2 without setting up a local server, just check out the live demo. This is probably the fastest and easiest way to see what's new in version 2. There is no sign-up required and you can start exploring new features right in away in your personal demo instance. Please note that all demos expire after one hour.

Installation

The alpha version of Automad version 2 can be deployed using Docker or Composer. It is also possible to simply download and install a distribution bundle manually. Note that the new version will require a modern browser, currently Chrome or Firefox, and a server running Apache or Nginx with PHP 8.2+.

Docker

The quickest way to try out Automad version 2 without actually worrying about Nginx and PHP, is using Docker. The v2 tagged image includes everything you need.

docker run -dp 80:80 -v ./app:/app --name mysite automad/automad:v2

This will essentially make your site available at port 80 and mount a directory called app in the current working directory for data persistence. A new user account for the Automad dashboard will be created automatically. The account details will be logged by the running container. You can show these logs using the following command:

docker logs mysite

Composer

Alternatively you can install Automad version 2 on your web server using Composer as follows:

composer create-project automad/automad . v2.x-dev

A temporary user account for the user account will be created automatically, which can be changed later. 

Also make sure that the entire directory where Automad is installed is writable by the web server and the PHP process. On Apache, everything should then be pretty much working out of the box. However, in case you are running Nginx, you can use the following server config:

server {
  root    /path/to/automad;
  index    index.php index.html;
  
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
  }
    
  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index  index.php;
    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include        fastcgi_params;
  }
}

Manual Installation

What's Next?

There is still a lot to do until a stable version of Automad 2.0 can be released. The plan is to have a solid beta version soon. With the beta release it should be possible to use Automad in production.

Enjoy!